In today's world, both mobile subscribers and the network operators are concerned with aspects like amount of data traffic that they could transmit/receive over the network, the perceived quality of experience, security of data transfer, low cost per bit of data transfer, seamless roaming and carrier-grade mobility. Further, due to limited spectrum resources and combined with the humongous explosion in the data traffic, the capacity offered by the cellular network operator has not been able to keep pace. Notably, there is a big gap in the industry to find alternate yet feasible means to provide the high data-rates asked by the subscribers and maintain quality of service to the data-hungry subscribers, while also ensuring that the network resources are not completely saturated.
All high-end phones today not only support cellular technologies but also support other technologies, especially Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Further, the devices could also be configured to use small-cell technologies like Femto-cells, Pico-cells, etc. operating in the same spectrum as cellular network and Wi-Fi operating in license-free band (e.g. 2.4 GHz, 5.8 GHz) and hence, requires no licensing. Of these Wi-Fi has two unique advantages. Firstly, Wi-Fi supports data transmission of the order of several hundreds of Mbps which is at times even better than offered by cellular networks. Secondly, it is commonly available in households and public places and subscribers are more than willing to adapt to Wi-Fi for data transfer. Hence, mobile network operators are strategically positioned to integrate Wi-Fi with macro-cellular networks.
Currently, the Wi-Fi service provided in the neighborhood of cellular coverage area is independent of the cellular network operator. Hence, the current method of cellular to Wi-Fi offloading is the subscriber-centric method wherein the switching from cellular to Wi-Fi is being done manually and has been driven by subscribers themselves. However, the main problem of subscriber-driven Wi-Fi offloading solution is the inability of the network operator to have a complete visibility of the traffic over the network. Further, a subscriber driven offloading mechanism would be unable to select an optimum offloading strategy as it has no information on utilization and capability of the cellular and Wi-Fi network.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art for network initiated offloading mechanism wherein, the subscriber would be offloaded from cellular to Wi-Fi network in an optimal manner in real time.